The Board’s Responsibility to Determine its Role

It is essential that each nonprofit board clearly determines what it seeks to achieve in advancing the organization and its role as a board in maximizing the organization’s success. Nonprofit board members want to be useful in helping the organizations they serve. Often, however, it’s unclear precisely what role they should perform in order to add value. As a result, board members tend to default to management activities because that’s familiar. Yet, having board members in management roles is counter-productive for nonprofits that employ a management staff. Each nonprofit board must conduct a process to determine its precise role in taking the organization forward.